He fully accepted the recognized teaching of the Church of England, and publicly appealed to the Prayer Book and the Thirty-nine Articles in justification of the doctrines he preached.
The rules of the Scribes enumerated thirty-nine main kinds of work forbidden on the Sabbath, and each of these prohibitions gave rise to new subtilties.
He wrote too some excellent tales of adventure, notably The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) and Greenmantle (1916).
In 796 Offa died after a reign of thirty-nine years and was succeeded by his son Ecgferth.
His sensitively honourable nature, which in early life had caused him to shrink from asserting his belief in Thirty-nine articles of faith which he had not examined, was shocked by the enormous abuses which confronted him on commencing the study of the law.
